Is this classic late-period disco? Or is it prototype ’80s dance-pop? Frankly, who cares when it sounds like this?!

(more…)

In their heyday in the early 1980s, it was impossible to ignore pop-soul trio Imagination with their infectious dance hits and flamboyant front man Leee John.

(more…)

Bob Dylan’s delivery drips with sarcasm on the opaque lyric of Idiot Wind, from my favourite album Blood On The Tracks, but the meaning remains elusive.

(more…)

There are a handful of musical moments in my life where I’ve heard a song for the first time and felt: This changes everything. Never Understand is one.

(more…)

Diana Ross will always enjoy a special place in my affections – the Queen of Motown sang the first song on the first album I ever bought.

(more…)

Etta James might not have come from the Mississippi Delta – she grew up Los Angeles and came of age in San Francisco – but she was a bona fide blues belter.

(more…)

Chicago blues and soul man Lou Pride recorded this Northern Soul favourite after moving down south to El Paso in 1972.

(more…)

This is powerful stuff: it reminds me of when I first heard Linton Kwesi Johnson back in my youth. Like LKJ, Cleeshay uses spoken word, though the music is stripped-back R&B rather than roots reggae.

(more…)

The Bee Gees song written for Otis Redding but redone as a hippie country-soul heartbreaker. Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers, give it a country twang replete with pedal steel guitar that was entirely absent from the original.

(more…)

Full disclosure: not being a jazz buff, I had never heard of Lou Donaldson who died this week at the ripe old age of 98. This is his masterpiece. (more…)